René Doyon

Professor, Université de Montréal
Professor René Doyon’s research activities are focussed on the development of state-of-the-art astronomical instrumentation for various ground- and space-based observatories. He is also actively involved in various observational programs for detecting and characterizing brown dwarfs, exoplanets and young low-mass stars. On the instrumentation front, he leads several infrared instrumentation projects (camera and spectrograph) for the Observatoire du Mont-Mégantic. He is co-investigator of the Gemini Planet Imager, which has been operational since 2013.
He is also co-principal investigator of SPIRou, a high-resolution infrared spectrograph installed on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope since 2018. Scheduled for operation in 2015, SPIRou is designed to detect terrestrial (Earth-like) planets within the “habitable zone” of low-mass stars in the solar neighborhood. He is also principal investigator of NIRISS, one of the four scientific instruments on the James Webb Space Telescope.
Professor Doyon is the Director of the Institute for Research on exoplanets.
Graduate students
- Dominic Couture (MSc 2017-2019, PhD 2019-, UdeM)
- Charles Cadieux (MSc 2018-2020, PhD 2020-, Université de Montréal)
- Simon-Gabriel Beauvais (MSc, UdeM)
- Olivia Lim (PhD 2019-, UdeM)
- Jonathan St-Antoine (MSc, UdeM)
- Thomas Vandal (MSc 2020-, UdeM)
- Antoine Darveau-Bernier (PhD, co-supervised with David Lafrenière, UdeM)
- Dylan Keating (PhD, co-supervised with Nicolas Cowan, McGill)
Former students
- Ryan Cloutier (PhD, co-supervised with Kristen Menou, UdeM and UofT)
- Marie-Eve Desrochers (MSc, UdeM)
- Olivier Roy-Loubier (MSc, UdeM)
- Marie-Eve Naud (PhD, co-supervised with Étienne Artigau, 2010-2016, now Scientific and EPO Coordinator at iREx)
- Jonathan Gagné (PhD, co-supervised with David Lafrenière, 2010-2015, now postdoctoral researcher at Carnegie)
- Lison Malo (PhD, 2010-2014, Resident astronomer at CFHT 2014-2017, now resident astronomer at OMM, since 2017)
- Patrick Ingraham (PhD, 2007-2013, now scientist at LSST since 2015)
- Jean-François Lavigne (PhD, 2004-2009, now optical scientist at ABB since 2012)
- David Lafrenière (PhD, 2002-2007, now professor at UdeM)
- Loïc Albert (PhD, end: 2006, now researcher at UdeM)
- Étienne Artigau (PhD, 2000-2006, now researcher at UdeM)
- Christian Marois (PhD, 2001-2004, now adjunct associate professor at University of Victoria)
As well as many student interns
In the media
Contact
Phone : 514-343-6111 x 3204
Email : doyon@astro.umontreal.ca
Office : Complexe des sciences, B-3411
Links